


Adagio

by KamalasFanfiction



Category: Avengers (Comics), Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Espionage, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Sex, Mild Gore, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Red Room, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KamalasFanfiction/pseuds/KamalasFanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adagio <br/>noun. <br/>In class, this term applies to a series of slow, sustained exercise movements designed to develop grace, sense of line and balance. On stage, this refers to the first part of a classical pas de duex danced by the ballerina and her partner.</p><p>(You never needed a happy ending)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The reader is written as female-presenting, and both they and Natalia are written as in their very late teens. The Winter Soldier is in his early twenties.

You remember blood-stained ankles and broken shoes when you dare glance back at the sum of horrors that birthed you. You lose sleep over it, understandably, and your bed springs creak and the walls peel and you’re stuck staring at a white patch in the ceiling, wondering how life had gotten so easy. Your fist twitches at your side, and you’re compelled to raise it high over your head, like a salute to a long dead nation.

Long live red Mother Russia, stained with the blood you gave her.

Your fingertips are burned- just the tips, where you’d pushed matches against them, desperate in your attempt to feel alive again. It’s getting harder, keeping your eyes open, keeping your head clear. You know what’s happening, know you’ll fall sooner rather than later down the rabbit hole, but that doesn’t mean you won’t fall scraping your nails all the way down, looking for purchase.

 _The Red Room is gone._  You whisper that to yourself like a prayer, a reminder, a blessing. The Red Room is gone and you are free. You are free and you can breathe in air and own it and eat your own food.  _You didn’t need them._  Another prayer, more a secret than a hope. You never needed them to stand, you were never afraid of what the dark would bring you.

Just what it would take from you.

-

“If you mess up, if you switch feet too early, play it off.” You fingers cup Natalia’s face gently, careful not to smear the blush from her cheeks. She holds a healthy glow, even in the face of another great performance, and you wonder if she enjoys it, all of the dancing. “The audience will not notice, as long as you pretend that it’s what you meant to do.”

Her voice is soft, calculated. “But the madame will notice.” Her lips part more, her breath too quick, fanning across your face. This is her third official performance, but she has been pushed to the center of the string of girls, pulled taut. She looks up at your through thick eyelashes, thinks of you as her Odette, a beautiful queen opened up to her by magic. “I am…”

“You will not fall.” And your confidence works on her, your play of reassurance assuaging her fears. You don’t know whether or not she will fall, but she is beautiful and she is glorious and the audience will not pay much attention to her. She is not the main focus. She is a maiden in the play, and you are a bride, and it will take three acts before she sees you.

“You’re needed elsewhere.” The madame tells you, her fingertips cold on your cheek. It echoes in you, “ _Elsewhere. Elsewhere. Elsewhere_.” You preen yourself to perfection, become a creature of mascara and warpaint in equal measure, and you stand at first position, waiting waiting waiting.

You are needed  _elsewhere_ , but Natalia needs you  _here_. She is bright green eyes and fear and her nails dig into your arm when she holds it. She would rather you bleed than have you walk away. It is her third performance in front of the country’s leader and she has never felt more like a child. She has outgrown her days of cold desks and crossed ankles. There is nothing but training and cold metal and she is afraid of failure. “Act three.” She repeats for you, nodding, hoping you would contradict her and tell her an earlier act, though the both of you have memorized the storyline.

“Act three.” And you think of kissing her, in that moment, your red lipstick against her forehead, on the decoration sitting there. It is a base human instinct and you shy away from it. “Natalia, if nothing else, you will survive.” She nods in your hands, her fingers pulling away from your arm, her nails leaving red crescent moons. You press your fingers against hers, break open her tight fist, and tilt your head into her hand.

You leave a kiss in her palm, and close her fingers around it.

It’s your little secret.

-

The madame is not one to be kept waiting and you are nothing if not punctual. Clocks beat inside your rib cage, the ticking of second hands behind your eyelids. You are a dancer, and you know how to keep your timing better than you know how to breathe. You don’t speak, don’t open your mouth to her, and she smiles, thin-lipped and red, in a way that reminds you of a snake. She doesn’t need to speak either, just narrow her eyes, and you are easily directed away from her and into a room made of padding and barres.

You are the best she’s ever molded and that is a fact that terrifies you.

Any of you, any of the Black Widows, you have only ever seen one man consistently. You all call him by many names, many strange and unique, but you and Natalia share one together, another secret.  _Grustnyye glaza_ \- sad eyes. He speaks to you both in sharp, rough tones, his American accent bleeding through when he struggles in Russian, and you wear away at your own Russian accent when you speak with him in English. He’s a recent acquisition, a new asset to Soviet supremacy, but he is strange and warm in ways neither you nor Natalia have ever felt. You talk sometimes, other times you are instinct and hands and mouths and hot breaths.

But the madame and his handler are watching now, and you two must not give away anything.

He comes back different, every time he leaves your eye. They are chipping away at him and you know it, you can see it in his sad, downturned eyes and increasingly quick movements. They are sanding down the man and leaving only the weapon. You know how it works- you have had it done to you so many times before.

You let him hurt you- a broken rib is nothing to you but broken bone, skin, and blood. You wonder if you have surpassed pain, but you catch his hand as it goes for your chest, break this pattern that you two have started. It’s a dance, one only you know the moves to, and pushing him to the ground by his metal arm is putting you in the first position. It’s not enough and you both know it. His handler wants savagery from him and the madame wants cruelty from you.

He breaks your nose and you bruise his throat.

His head clatters against your nose, and you know you will have to reset it before the performance, fix your make-up once more, but you have your fingers against his throat and your legs tied around his waist. When he reaches for your shoulders, you drop to the ground, holding on to him only by your ankles. You fold back and, when you gain enough momentum, crack your foot forward below his belt, hard enough to hear him hiss.

You’re holding back, and the madame notices.

But she says nothing. As long as you can play it off.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t know you’re holding back, thinks he knows the extent of how vicious you can be, but he doesn’t know you as well as the madame knows you. You were not made dangerous by the Red Room- you always were.

The madame calls for you to stop when the soldier’s face tints blue from asphyxiation, two seconds from unconsciousness, your legs around his neck. It was barely a fair fight and you scare yourself when you see his blood under your fingernails and don’t flinch.

You have the highest marks in the Red Room.

-

Natalia waits for you in one of the side rooms of the compound, an old classroom, the blackboard cracked and the desks overturned. Neither of you know what happened and neither of you ask. It was a room that belonged to girls without faces or importance. You two are the only people in the world when you stop spinning along with it. “You did well.” You tell her, even though you didn’t see her performance. She can see the bruises under your make-up and she knows where you’ve been, but doesn’t call you out on your lie.

She doesn’t know if it’s a lie or not, when you were just trying to help her.

“How did you rank?” She perches on the edge of a toppled desk, balanced on the bar that connects a chair to the desk. She knows your high scores. She is afraid of what will happen if you fail to meet expectations one day.

“Top rank, as per usual.” You say it without inflection, a shrug off of your shoulders, and she is amazed. She wants that control for herself, but is satisfied with you exerting it over her. The Room was a controlled space and you were something so specific that it made her feel the blood beating in her chest. You lick your lips and lean against the wall, closing your eyes. “I’ll graduate, soon enough.”

Natalia freezes, tipping forward and off of the chair. “Did the madame tell you that?”

She doesn’t want you to graduate. She wants to freeze these moments and live in them forever, these stolen bits of freedom and love. If you graduate, you will leave her and you will leave her to the dark. She isn’t afraid of the dark.

She’s afraid of what it will make her.

“No, but I know how she looks at me.” You gauge her reaction, look at her through slanted eyes. You don’t want to leave her either, but you were out of your depth when it came to graduation. Becoming a genuine Black Widow threw you out into the world, and neither of you had ever seen one return home to her roots. There was work to be done for Mother Russia, of course, but none of that work was within her. “I am the best she has ever had, and she does not want to keep me here much longer.” You close your eyes, wrap your arms around your own waist. “Sad eyes, he will keep you company when I am gone. I promise you that.”

“I would give him, if you would stay.” There’s a cut of viciousness in her voice that you know she meant. She would give anyone if you would stay with her, practice her movements, practice her corrections. She is C-ranked and average and terrified of how far she could sink without your guidance or your warmth. “If you could, would you come back for me?” It’s not a question, because she doesn’t want it answered.

But she needs it answered. “If I could, I would come back for you. I would come back for you and I would come back for the American-” You stand up, look around the room for cameras, wires, and choke down preset, muddled words. “And I would burn this damned place down to its roots.”

She’s startled by this, coming from you, coming from the best. “This is the only place we belong.” She shakes her head, just slightly. She can’t imagine a place outside of Russia, outside the snow and hardships. “This is the only place we’ve ever belonged.”

You cross the room, notice her smudged eyeliner, her tired eyes. When you press a kiss against her forehead, leave a satisfactory bright-red reminder, she closes her eyes, and you stare out at the white patch of the room. “We have no place in this world.” That was the first lesson both of you were taught.

Her fingers are strong when they catch the front of your bodice, mascara staining her cheeks in small cracks. “My place is beside you,” Her voice shakes, a rumble that reminds you of volcanoes you’d never seen, of thunder you’d never truly heard. “And there is nothing that can change that.”

You don’t want to tell her about how easily things could change, so you hold her in this moment, allow her to be as unbreakable as she thinks you are. But you’re not. 

You’re not.


	2. Chapter 2

"Eyes on me, Natalia." You keep your hands curled into fists, across from your chest, parallel to your body, searching her for a similar resolve. The floor of the classroom has been cleaned since the last time the two of your were there, a clean sheen of wax, where the tables and chairs remain turned over. A calculated apocalypse. A silent threat from the madame. "Natalia, please, you have to stop thinking about my graduation. It will change nothing."

"You mean, that thinking will do no good, or that you will not still be by my side?" Her eyebrows are wrinkled, her fists up as well, by there's a slack lean to her shoulders that tells you she's not taking this seriously. "Both are true. I do not like to think about it, though." 

You push out a punch, straight forward, your thumb to the side of your hand, aiming for her nose. She doesn't duck in time, and you curl your fist out of the way, skimming her ear. "We will never make progress if you don't work with me on this. I won't be here to guide you for much longer- I have to, at least, leave my legacy." 

She surprises you by cutting out a punch towards your stomach. You catch her by the wrist, and she leans forward slightly, her knuckles skimming your bare stomach. "I don't want to think of it." She steps forward, eyes focused, lips slightly parted. "All the time we have left, I don't want to spend it fighting." Her fist unfurls, running her fingers across your stomach. "There are better things we could do. More... Interesting things." Her smile is practiced, the one the madame has shown you all to do when luring men. 

You are not a mark, though. 

"If the madame caught us doing anything other than training, Natalia, you know how bad it would be." You release her wrist, curling your fingers into hers and holding her hand. Her pulse hums underneath the skin, excited and bright. "For you. I won't take that risk, you know it." 

Her eyes widen slightly, and she swallows, losing composure too quickly. If this was an exercise, she would've surely failed. Her fingers flex against your own. "I... I thought, maybe, I could convince you- we are Black Widows, we know the places to... hide." But there are no true blind spots for the madame, for the handlers, for the Russian eye over the both of you. "A way to see you off." Her smile is weak, a hint of naivety.

You've both heard rumor that graduation is a painful procedure, though you're certain it can't be as bad as the horrors you've already endured. There's the application of the Black Widow serum, you know- that's as far as anyone else knows. There's a rumor that it burns beneath the skin, that it guts you, brings you back into the world a different person. You ask the American about it when your lips are at his collarbone, but he hasn't been in Russia long enough to know. 

You sweep her feet out from under her in a quick spin and she startles, eyes wide open and staring at you- betrayed. Natalia reaches out to catch her fall, arms out and slightly bent, but you stick out a leg, catching her with your calf to her chest. She stares, one foot from the ground. “As it always is,” she swallows her words, her lips moving without words. “You’re the one catching me.”

“As always.” You agree, watching as she pushes herself up, the hints of gravel on her palms leaving indentations after she brushes them off. “If you wanted to give me a parting gift, you could give me an assurance of your safety.” You grab one of her hands, cradling it in both of yours. “Start taking these fights seriously- I’m trying to help you.”

She tilts her head, a humorless laugh falling out of her mouth. “Understood.” Natalia falls into an even fighting stance, feet apart as she holds her fists out in front of her. Like you two were children- this was the first stance you had ever learned. “Ready?”

“Of course.” And you mirror her stance. You throw the first punch, give her an easy out as she dodges right, away from you. She aims lower, to your stomach, to the neat incision scars between the cradle of your hips. You arch back, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward- almost the same scenario. 

Not wanting to be beat, not wanting to show you weakness before you were ripped from her life, Natalia grabs a fistful of your hair, turning her arm backward to force you down with her. You go down, but on top of her, your face crashing into the space between her shoulder blades. In her desperation, however, you’re still on top, with her pinned. You relent, getting up and brushing off your training slacks. 

She remains motionless for two second too long, making you nervous.

You cram your hands underneath her chest, flipping her over. Her face is a mess of blood and tears- the force of her fall having caused a nosebleed. Her words are sticky, the blood moving over her lips as she doesn’t move to wipe it away. “I’m sorry.” She’s shaking and, when you reach out to hold her, shrinks away. “The blood.” She gestures vaguely to her nose, grinding the heel of her hand against it- agitating it further. 

In a quieter voice, “I’m weak.” Her breathing speeds up, the beginning of panic. “They’ll eat me alive.” But she doesn’t move closer to you- to comfort. She wants to clutch you to her, to make herself forget anything other than your name and the warmth of your arms- your lips against her forehead- your hands under her elbows- fixing her posture- fixing- fixing-

You won’t be around much longer to fix her mistakes. 

You push yourself closer, your reaching arms wiping the blood, though most of it had already crusted over- ending as a dark brown smudge on her skin. She doesn’t move, frozen in your casual affection. “Nata _ sha _ .” You add the diminutive, and her eyes scrunch closed, like she didn’t want to hear it. “You’ll be fine.” You wipe her cheek with your left thumb, cradling her face. You kiss both her cheeks, flushed warm with embarrassment. “I feel like you always forget I’m a prima, solnyshko. You don’t need to be the best to survive.” 

You guide her head to your chest, smoothing your hands down her back, shushing her as she gives out abortive sobs- an instinct you all shared. “It certainly helps, though.” She concedes- she does forget that the both of you aren’t on the same level. She could survive without being the best- just because you excelled didn’t mean that she had to reach you, to take your place. 

Although it would be nice. 

“Let’s clean you up, Natalia.” And the semi-formality comes back as you pull away from her, look into her eyes as you smooth her hair back into its ponytail. To her, your touch is electric- the flyaways you touch humming like loose live wires. She lets you pull her up, trying to will her ragdoll limbs into alertness- noting these weakness and mulling it over. She identifies it- she’s tired. It’s late (the only times you two could ever meet outside of the educations or training), and the blood loss might’ve made her slightly dizzy. 

It’s only when you turn back to make sure she’s following you that she notices the bright red stain on the front of your white shirt. She’s vaguely reminded of your lipstick marks, and smiles without thinking. 

-

You shouldn’t have done it, but you look at the Winter Soldier’s files. 

It’s late, and you’re tired, your limbs heavy with the need to sleep, but you pass by the file room on your way out of the old classroom. You don’t know his name, and everything is alphabetized, but you start at ‘Зимний’, carefully plying your fingers through the folders. The folders wouldn’t how your fingerprints, but the metal handle of the cabinet would, and you’d used the edge of your shirt to cover your hand as you’d opened it. 

You come up short and, grunting, you move forward in the alphabet, opening another cabinet. You didn’t have much time, but you were a spy. Working well under pressure was your best asset- everything else was secondary. 

Your thumb freezes on an accordion file. You whip your head back, unsure whether or not the sound had been a footstep or your sudden heart palpitations. With sweaty hands, you undo the string holding it closed, pulling it open to peer into it. 

You smooth them on your pants, try to halt their shaking. Black Widows know no fear.

But the label is staring you in the face. зимние солдаты. Not one, but multiple Winter Soldiers. Your fingers flit through the files- Aleksandrov, Nicolai. Mikhailov, Grigori. Kyznetsov, Alexandra. Six in total, a stamp for ‘terminated’ across the top of several of the files. The only one that is unmarked reads ‘неозаглавленный’- no name or stamp. 

You open it, quickly, unhesitantly, and you wonder if the Red Room made you this way. Greedy for any scrap of knowledge. Unconcerned with the known, searching for the unlabelled secrets. 

There are four papers and two photos.

You’re startled to find that the first page is a filled U.S. Army recruitment sheet. You squint in the low light at the small text, reading ‘1940’ beside the ‘Recruited:’ space, eyes wide as you find a name. James Buchanan Barnes. Died 1945. 

A picture of your Winter Soldier with his sad eyes, grinning and wearing an American army uniform. 

Your hands do shake as you scan the Russian papers, noting he hasn’t aged a day- he was injected with a serum (chemical composition located under a different name)-  best weapon against Captain Ameri-

The madame clears her throat from the doorway, and you freeze, making sure you seem as natural as possible in putting the file back together. From her position, you know she can’t see what you’re looking at specifically. But you don’t wind the string fast enough, and she’s behind you quickly. She calls you by your last name, her nails against your scalp, running slow down your head. The nerve endings on your scalp catch fire, your brain sending messages for your heart to beat out of your rib cage and spare you from whatever comes next. 

She tilts her head down over your shoulder, looking down at the accordion file. Her grin is slow, predatory. “Learning about the enemy?” Her chuckle is dry, and it makes you even more nervous. You turn to face her, as you’ve always been taught to. 

“The Winter Soldier-” Nervously, you correct yourself. “The Winter Soldiers are our comrades, no?” And you’re afraid that she catches the lift in your voice, the question in it. 

“Our comrades.” She nods, but there’s something derogatory in her voice. Her upper lip lifts just slightly, causing a wrinkle across her face as she mulls this over. When she turns back to you, her red lips rework themselves into a smile, rolling into her cheeks and pinning them back. “I am proud of you. Your sisters would not even attempt this.”

“Thank you.” You nod your head, the files impossibly heavy in your arms. You don’t dare turn to put them back in until she tells you to. 

“You may return to your bed once you put away the files. Do not make this a habit.” She nods down at the files, her smile falling. Her cold expression becomes familiar to you once again. The madame turns to walk away, then stops in the doorway, turning to look at you over her shoulder. “I knew my efforts on you would not be put to waste. I do mean it when I say I am proud of you.”

Long after she leaves and you put away the files, you think that that might be worse than any torture she could’ve inflicted. 

-

When you’re pulled away from your sisters the next day, only Natalia seems surprised. You knew, despite her apparent approval, what you’d done was transgressive to the madame, that you needed to be reminded of your place. The madame doesn’t touch you when she leads you into the other section of the Red Room, the one where the Winter Soldier (Winter Soldiers, you now knew) trained and slept.

“Use the knowledge you gained last night.” She says, plainly, her smile wide and frozen like a mask as she leads you deeper into the concrete hall, until you turn off into the training room. The door has a hatch and two code-panels (newly installed, you assumed), and she makes sure to angle her body so that you couldn’t see her put in the numbers. It’s pointed, it’s to let you know that her pride only extended so far. 

When the door creaks open, the hatch wheel turning, Alexandra Kyznetsov looks up at you from her perch on a stool, her eyes wide and bloodthirsty. Like a predator, her eyes don’t seem to move fluidly while they watch you- they tick-tick-tick to the side, choppy patterns while she never blinks. She has red hair like Natalia, her curls knotted and poorly taken care of- slightly damp with ice shards in it. When Alexandra gets up from her seat, you instinctively take a step back, but feel the madame’s palm flat and forceful against your lower back. 

“She’s been injected with the serum.” You say- this is by no means a fair fight. She is at least five years your senior in fighting and has been genetically enhanced to be better. With  _ your _ Winter Soldier, you had the advantage of his humanity, the flicker of connection behind his irises.

There is nothing behind this woman’s eyes. No mercy. 

But you can’t deny the madame. So you take a step forward, breathe in, breathe out, and stand still, waiting. Keeping your knees slightly bent. Trying not to be the amateur you felt like. You don’t make the first move because, honestly? Your main goal isn’t to win this fight. 

It’s to  _ survive _ this fight. Minimize the damages and hope you don’t lose any limbs. 

Alexandra cuts forward, one strong lurch as her fist (tight, strong- you can see the tendons in her arms) comes at your stomach. You suck it in instinctively, side-step to not give away any ground.  _ Defense, defense, defense _ , you think as she throws jagged punches- at your head, your neck, both arms. You keep side-stepping, until you’ve made it in a full circle trying not to catch one of those blows. 

Considering you off-guard, in perfect synchronization with another punch, Alexandra’s foot cracks into your calf. With your bent knees, it doesn’t break the bone like it otherwise would’ve in your tense pose, but it gives you a bruise you immediately feel form, and knocks your leg out from underneath you. You’re trying not to fall (trying to support yourself on the tip of your pointe shoe- the madame hadn’t let you change out of your performance clothes), but she clocks you over your head. 

One hard punch to your crown, and you’re seeing stars. 

You hit the ground and roll away, seeing everything in slow-motion as she draws her foot back for another kick and you barely miss it. It’s not black eyes and cuts if she lands a blow on your face- it’s most likely a one-way trip to the morgue. She’s lightning-quick and, even with all of your training, all fourteen years of it, all you can do is keep yourself from not dying. 

Like one of the cinematics the instructors show you, her foot comes sailing forward while you blink-blink-blink until it seems like the stills of the movies, with the black spaces in-between. You grab her boot (unfair advantage- she was half-dressed in combat gear) and yank- her balance compromised for enough precious seconds for you to make her fall. 

Her head hits the concrete loudly, like a melon on a linoleum floor. Alexandra is stunned, if only momentarily, and you scramble to your feet, landing in a vague defensive position, your brains too scrambled for you to think of a proper one. When she stands back up, the blank look in her eyes is replaced with an indignant fury, the need for revenge, and when she reaches out for your hair, she knots her fingers in it.

You can’t dodge any more. 

Her fist slams into your face, and you feel your nose break. The cartilage snaps, your blood gushes out of your nose due to the sheer force of the blow. You lose your ability to count them after punch three, when your vision starts to go dark around the edges, and all you can think is that you need it to  _ stop _ , you can’t take any more- you need to leave, you need to get out of here, you need her  _ hands off of you _ -

Muscle memory. Half-numb, you crack your hand on her jaw, an upper cut she can’t dodge while pummeling into you. You can’t see what happens through your swollen eyes (you vaguely wonder if you’ll ever be able to open them again, but it’s the ghost of a thought- it comes and goes without your bidding) but it stops. It stops, and you slink to the ground, your unbruised leg hitting the ground while you try to balance on your other leg. Teetering on the brink of unconsciousness. 

You hear the madame speaking, like some far-away judge. “She’s sustained heavy injury, yes, but she’s also the only one to ever survive a serious fight with your Winter Soldiers.” The low timber of a man’s voice. You don’t pay attention to him. “The country is still in need of her services. We can’t let such talent go to waste.”

A cold hand against your forehead. “It is best to administer the serum now. We can no longer afford to wait, now that we know the full extent of her capabilities.” Her cold laugh mixes with the sensation on your forehead in a synesthesia of loud blues behind your closed eyelids. “To think, Anatoli, your perfected soldiers can be bested by my  _ ballerinas _ .”


End file.
